Saint Louise Regional Hospital, opened in 1989 in Gilroy, California, is a 93-bed acute care hospital offering a wide range of services to residents in both Santa Clara and San Benito counties.

Backed by its mission of ‘Inventiveness to Infinity’ – being continuously resourceful and creative – Saint Louise has been utilizing the Higher StandardsSM medical transcription services provided by Acusis. Recently, the organization agreed to adopt the Acusis backend speech recognition service, AcuSpeech.

Saint Louise is using Acusis’ AcuSpeech to augment transcriptionists toward improving the quality and turnaround time of their transcription services.“We learned about the backend speech recognition solution from Acusis, and we wanted to participate because of the benefits we would gain from both a quality and budgetary standpoint,” explained Maria Pineda-Biol, director of the health information management department at Saint Louise Regional Hospital.“The program began with Acusis qualifying the physicians in our network to ensure their speech could be captured without a significant amount of editing.Thirteen of our physicians initially qualified,which was a strong start.”

As the program proceeded, the results were audited by Pineda-Biol’s team to ensure they were receiving the same level of accuracy, and quality and turnaround times weren’t being altered. In all three areas, the audit,which consisted of 39 separate reports, showed very little differences across the board. “After conducting the audits and seeing how this service positively impacts our budget, there are absolutely no worries in using Acusis’ backend speech recognition going forward,” said Maria Pineda-Biol. “We’re very satisfied with the results,” she said.“The accuracy of the transcriptions was great and the turnaround times were met accordingly.We will continue to use Acusis speech recognition going forward, and we hope to have even more physicians qualify as the program continues to develop.”

But for Saint Louise, the true impact of the backend speech recognition services provided by Acusis is just starting. “We are getting the same high-quality level of results at a lower cost, so it’s very difficult to argue with that,” said Pineda-Biol.“We can now direct some of our budget to other needed resources. That’s a positive scenario for our department, and it also made our chief financial officer happy!”

Perhaps more importantly, it gives Maria Pineda-Biol’s department just one more technology – and service – to offer its physicians. “As far as technology goes, AcuSpeech is highly competitive and it’s one more way in which we can be continuously resourceful and creative. That’s not only supportive of our mission but also of our physician team.”